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Local government officials and utility leaders ask U.S. Congress to invest in water projects and to provide regulatory flexibility. The framework is part of a broader debate about how to balance ecosystems, public health and financial constraints, in this, the 40th year of the Clean Water Act.
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Revenue for the fund would come from taxes on containers and waste products.
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Before adjourning for a five-week vacation, the House of Representatives passed a US$383 million drought-relief bill, the Hill reports. To pay for it, farmland conservation programs will be cut. Critics say that this is short-sighted because these programs protect, among others things, the soil’s ability to hold moisture. “If Congress is serious about assisting farmers [...]
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Climate change will have the greatest economic effect on crops in the Midwest’s Corn Belt states, where annual loses could range from US$1.1 billion to US$4.1 billion by 2030. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service used four climate projections, a crop-growth simulation, and a model for predicting how farmers would change their crop [...]
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Two reports from federal research agencies suggest that sea-level rise along the coastal United States will happen quicker and surge higher than the global average. Combined with storm surges and tidal fluctuations, higher seas increase the flood risk for billions of dollars of property, as well as vital infrastructure such as roads, power stations and [...]
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Some key programs identified in the draft, which was released earlier this week, are also facing budget cuts for the 2013 fiscal year.
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The state of Arizona has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. section of the agency that administers water treaties between the U.S. and Mexico, according to Nogales International. The lawsuit claims that the U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission is violating the Clean Water Act by allowing untreated industrial wastewater to flow from Mexico into [...]
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Leavening the imperiled areas from the latest “Endangered Rivers” report with a few bright spots.
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Decades in the making, a Navajo-Hopi water rights settlement faces grassroots opposition, as tribe members fear the proposed settlement gives away too much and promises too little.
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Build Them Faster Continuing his mission of cutting red tape and making federal review processes leaner, President Obama signed an executive order to speed the pace of approval for infrastructure projects. The order establishes a committee comprised of cabinet-level departments, which will submit a plan for a streamlined, coordinated review process for water, energy, transportation [...]
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Restoring Abundance At a House hearing on the 2013 budget requests for several of the nation’s water and power agencies, California Republican Tom McClintock said the central objective of the House water and energy policy was to “restore abundance”—unlike the Obama administration, which, he claims, is trying to encourage and threaten Americans into using less [...]
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Hear Ye, Hear Ye Last Thursday the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs heard testimony on tribal water rights settlements. Federal officials talked about the Obama administration’s preference for negotiated settlements instead of litigation. Some 16 negotiations are in progress, two of which—the Blackfeet and the Navajo-Hopi—have legislation under consideration in Congress. The chair of the [...]
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Military Base Water Contamination From the 1950s to the 1980s people living at Camp Lejeune Marine Base near Jacksonville, N.C. unknowingly drank tap water contaminated with benzene and other chemicals. Lawsuits have been filed. Now, the state’s U.S. senators are criticizing attempts by military officials to redact information in a federal report about the base’s [...]
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The proposed pipeline could be approved on a much shorter timeline than was laid out by President Barack Obama, after the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill Thursday giving approval power for the project to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). The Senate has not yet considered the bill.
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The president throws more clean-energy money at the Energy Department, while cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency’s budget come at the expense of water and sewer infrastructure.
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A few choice items have already trickled out or were set in deals made months ago, but today President Barack Obama will submit his fiscal year 2013 budget to Congress. We’ll have all the water details here, once the complete document lands. Afterward, the budget debate moves to the east end of the National Mall [...]
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Solar Review The deadline for submitting public comments on the Bureau of Land Management’s broad environmental review of solar energy development in six western U.S. states is Friday. The review will result in changes to the agency’s resource management plans, allowing it to concentrate solar energy projects on the most suitable parcels of land. Comments [...]
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Lines in the Sand Last Wednesday, the Obama administration denied a permit for Keystone XL, a 2,750 km (1,710 mi) pipeline from Canada’s tars sands to oil refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast. In a statement, President Barack Obama said that the decision was “not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but [on] [...]
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Peer Reviewers for Fracking Study The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is accepting nominations for qualified scientists to review its draft study of groundwater contamination in a Wyoming town. The draft, released in December, found compounds that are associated with natural-gas drilling processes in two monitoring wells. To nominate someone, send the person’s name, address [...]
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Frack the Halls The shale gas boom rolled through Congress last week. At a House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee hearing, chairman Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio) said states are doing a good job regulating gas drilling and that states would lose the economic benefits if “needlessly restrictive” federal regulations for wastewater were put in place. The Senate [...]
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